


i think it’s better if we just pretend

by allidon



Category: All American (TV)
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Morning After, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-03
Updated: 2018-11-03
Packaged: 2019-08-17 07:07:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16511627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allidon/pseuds/allidon
Summary: This is, quite possibly, the worst thing she’s ever done.





	i think it’s better if we just pretend

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Strangers Again by Against The Current.

She wakes in a room she doesn’t recognise. 

That part’s not unusual. She hasn’t been making the best choices, lately. Or ever, perhaps. 

The headache’s not unfamiliar either—the downside of self-medication. There’s a pill for that, though. One pill takes her up, another brings her down. There’s a pill for everything, except the hole in her chest that never quite seems to go away. 

There’s a leg, curled around hers. A body pressed against her back. 

She doesn’t remember how she got here. 

The sheets are blue. Soft. She’s woken up in worse places. Probably with worse people, although that remains to be seen.

The body behind her shifts in restless sleep, pulls her closer. She presses back against a warm chest, focuses on another heart beating against her spine.

It feels nice. Intimate. That’s the part that’s new.

She rolls, slides her knee against coarse leg hair and then between smoother thighs. It elicits a soft sigh that’s thrilling until—

He looks different when he’s asleep. Younger. Softer. 

More like she remembers him. She can’t pinpoint when it was that he became quite so distant, but it’s so long that seeing him like this is alien. 

She stares at him. It can’t be—not him. Anyone but him.

It’s been barely two weeks since he started dating Layla. Since Layla had frantically called her for advice. Since the first time she’d smiled, really smiled, since the accident. 

This is, quite possibly, the worst thing she’s ever done.

He slides his hand over her leg. “Mornin’.” It’s mumbled, his voice fuzzy with sleep. 

It comes with a wave of memories from the night before.

_ Shots. A pill pressed hastily into her hand. More shots. _

_ Asher’s eyes, soft with concern. That feeling she kept chasing, like falling and flying all at once. _

_ That sudden bitter thought that she’d liked him first. _

_ Her hand on his arm. _

_ His mouth, hot against hers, and then on her neck, her collarbone, her hip.  _

_ His hand, sliding up her thigh. Her body arching into it, her fingers in his hair, her mouth pressed to his ear as he drew quiet moans. _

Her stomach contracts violently; she has to suppress the shudder that threatens. 

He’s still mostly asleep. There’s a smile, playing at his lips.

She thinks of Layla, again. Of the excitement in her voice. Of everything that had come before it. Of what she’d said, two weeks after the funeral.

_ I just want to have something good. _

_ To have something good. _

_ Something good. _

_ Something. _

She sits up, the movement so abrupt that he flinches. That means something, she thinks, but she can’t process that when she’s suddenly so horrified.

He blinks awake, frowning. “What—?” 

She’s already out of bed, her feet pressed against the cold of the wood floor. It feels more real than anything has in a long time. She pushes her weight down, harder. “I should go,” she says. She doesn’t look at him. She can’t.

She thinks he says something. She doesn’t listen—she collects her clothes in a daze, puts on enough to get herself home. 

She stops, once, in the doorway. He’s upright in bed, his hair sticking up at the back and some expression between asleep and bewildered on his face.

“This never happened,” she says, and then she leaves.


End file.
